


For The Rich and The Heartless

by lesbianmxgicians (kaianieves)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, F/F, no magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaianieves/pseuds/lesbianmxgicians
Summary: Senior year, boarding school. No way Margo's getting into an Ivy now.





	For The Rich and The Heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Femslash prompt: Margo and Alice in a non magic boarding school AU roommate situation.

If she had to hear her mother say another word, Margo was going to put a shotgun in her mouth and pull the trigger. The long and the short of it; they were sending her away, to some pseudo-reform boarding school for the “best and brightest” girls in America. No more epic parties, or boys or fun flavoured hallucinogenic substances. She was leaving all of that, along with her friends in sunny California. It was off to Farmington, Michigan, two thousand miles away. Margo’s friends would graduate, forgetting about her as they attended Harvard and Princeton and Dartmouth. She’d probably be relegated to a baby ivy because of this boarding school stint.

“Your father and I believe this is what’s best for you, Margo,” her mom said. She wanted to roll her eyes until she could see her brain. Maybe then she could muster up some sort of psychic power to shut it off. Or just scare her mother enough to swerve the car off the highway. But no, that was impossible, and they were still in the car inching closer to LAX.

When they arrived at the airport, Margo and her mother got out of the car as two men in suits carried the luggage out of the trunk. Her mother held Margo at a shoulder’s length, looking at her affectionately. They were the same height, and she’d always been told they looked alike. Now when Margo looked at her mother’s face, it just made her angry. She felt betrayed. She would never forget this. Never.

“I love you, sweetie.” Mother dearest leaned closer, kissing Margo’s forehead. She caught one last whiff of the expensive perfume she’d been smelling her entire life. It used to smell like home, but now it hurt her nose. “I’ll see you at Christmas, alright? Enjoy your flight.”

Margo walked away, and her mother let her go. Her mom got in one last sentence before she walked through the airport doors to the empty private wing they paid outrageous fees to have access to. “Your father sends his best!” Of course he did. Because he wasn’t willing to give Margo a chance, wasn’t willing to accept that this was who she was. He sent his best by sending her to the middle of nowhere with no friends and no family, to somehow be fixed and rid of who she was. Her father’s best had always been sweeping things under the rug.

The flight was boring; nothing special. First class had sparkling water that, with a little flirting with the male flight attendant, turned to champagne. The drive through Farmington was midly entertaining, mostly in an a shock-awe way. It was Suburbia Delight, rich white classism at it’s almost-peak. White picket fences, Victorian houses and hideous McMansions galore.

The car Margo sat in suddenly tipped backwards on its axis, making Margo look out the window. They were driving up a rather steep hill. The school came into view. It was a large grey building, built of solid brick and metal. The driver stopped just short of the entrance. The front doors were tall and grand and wooden, a crest carved into their faces. The driver handed Margo her bags before getting behind the wheel again, shutting his door and driving back down the hill. So that was it. It was time to go this alone.

The doors were a struggle in heels, but she managed to keep them open long enough to drag her Chanel rolling bag inside. Another bag rested on her shoulder, and another in her other hand. The hallways inside were well lit, the walls wood paneled and glossy. A red velvet carpet ran throughout the first floor, which Margo discovered as she wandered it. It seemed empty.

Eventually she came upon an office. An old woman with brown hair and bulbous glasses was sitting at a large desk, looking over papers. Margo cleared her throat.

“Ah, yes,” the woman said, standing. “You are Margo Hanson, correct?” Margo nodded. “Welcome to Ann Blaire Hall. Someone should be here in a moment to show you to your room.”

There were no chairs in this office, and the appointed guide hadn’t arrived yet, so she stood and waited. Margo didn’t want to ask the brown haired secretary for more information, so she tried to gleam details from things around the office. The door to the left of the woman at the desk had a plaque that read ‘Dean’. That must have been the principal’s office, but dean? It wasn’t even a collegiate institute. Way to wank yourself about being a high school principal. Maybe he was short and suffering from little man syndrome.

Just as Margo started entertaining that thought, someone else appeared; a girl, about her age. She looked blonde and shy and Margo disliked her already.

“Are you Margo Hanson?” she asked. Even her voice was mousy.

“In the flesh.”

“You can come with me,” Mousy Girl said. The secretary didn’t look up from her desk as they left.

The hallways were still silent. When Mousy Girl showed Margo a staircase, she sighed. “Can you take one of these?”

Usually it wasn’t something she did. Margo didn’t like anyone but the appropriate people touching her bags. But these stairs looked steep and high, and she was all out of fucks to give at the moment. Mousy Girl took the smallest bag that was in Margo’s hand. She then started to climb the stairs.

“So what’s your name?” Margo asked.

“Alice. Alice Quinn.” It was sort of fitting for a girl like her. Margo already felt like she knew her, because she’d known about five hundred other girls just like her back home. Shy, sweet and quiet, but everyone secretly clamoured for attention. So they clung onto Margo. It was  _not_  something she liked. But her name- Alice Quinn. It had a versatility to it. She could be the mousy book nerd that she most likely already was, but just behind that was a sleek, take-no-shit vixen just waiting for her moment. Margo didn’t want to get all Oscar Wilde here, but she already found the girl intriguing.

“Alice. You’ll tell me the truth, won’t you? What’s the situation like here?”

“I don’t think I understand,” Alice said.

“Is there a Queen Bee? If yes, who is she and how does one make an impression?”

Alice stopped on a step, turning to Margo. “I think you’ve got it all wrong. There isn’t really… any of that here. There’s no, uh, Queen Bee. Everyone just… is.”

Margo blinked. So she was in a high school with no one as the pubescent ruler, and no one was looking for one either. This was going to be new.

“Alright then… What about teachers?” The rest of the way up, Alice quietly told Margo about each teacher; there were thirty of them, and each had their own quirks and favourite qualities in a teacher’s pet and ways to make a student’s life hell. By number thirty, Mr. Sawyer, they were standing in the middle of a hallway. All the doors were closed, and they both stood in front of the only one with a giant white paint mark on it.

“Where’s this?”

“Your room- our room. We’re roommates,” Alice stumbled.

She didn’t seem like the worse person to live with. She was proving to be a little less than the stereotype let on. Alice had personality behind the A-line skirt and glasses.

Inside it looked like a rich man’s college dorm room. There weren’t bunk beds, thank god, but two twin beds with soft sheets and two study desks. A vintage-looking lamp sat in the corner, a small chandelier hanging overhead. There wasn’t a bathroom- that was communal, down the hall and to the left. According to Alice, you couldn’t miss it. There was a grand dresser and a white vanity, leaving just enough room for it not to be cramped. The walls were sky blue. Margo was expecting a garish pink, something perhaps insisted on by the administration to remind their students of their femininity.

Where it differed in being a dorm was the quiet.

“Where is everyone?” Margo asked.

“Class. You kind of caught us in the middle of the day. I was in English,” Alice said.

“Hmm. The pen is mightier and the sword and all that?” Alice nodded, smiling just a little. Throughout their meeting so far, her face had stayed drawn and slightly miserable looking. She didn’t seem that way at all, though. “Well, I prefer Ford’s  _‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and the Jacobean Tragic Perspective_ , personally,” Margo said. Alice giggled. Margo ungracefully flopped onto her bed and sprawled her arms and legs out. She looked at Alice, upside down, who was standing near the wall.

“Alright, I think I’m settled.” It was an invitation for Alice to scurry back to Mrs. Meyers or Mr. Nguyen or whoever was teaching high school seniors Bulwer-Lytton.

Instead Alice crossed over to her bed, laying down stick-straight, head on her pillow. “I think I’ve had enough of Mr. Nguyen’s constant speaking in similes.”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly.”


End file.
